They were pouring liquid time machines on Mission Street Thursday night, and one sip was all it took to blow you back 100 years or more.

Want to feel like 1853, the year Alcatraz Island was mapped as a military fort and Benicia was the capital of California? Knock down a glass of Pisco Punch, bartenders doing the pouring said - 1853 was the year it came to San Francisco, and that sweet slickness of brandy and gum syrup on the tongue was the drinking sensation of the town.

Or how about 1908, when President Theodore Roosevelt's "Great White Fleet" of warships made its triumphant entrance through the Golden Gate? The Boothby Cocktail, a Manhattan shot through with champagne, ought to do the trick - 1908 was its inaugural year here.

The guys carefully crafting up these drinks Tuesday were barkeeps in old-timey bowties, and the recipes they used were dredged up from long ago in San Francisco. Which was all quite fitting, because the pouring was being done for the California Historical Society at its annual holiday party.

The party, like most holiday bashes, was essentially an excuse to yak, drink and eat snacks. But what set this one apart was the three cocktails on hand: The dark brown Pisco, the smooth clear Boothby, and standard Martinis.

They are all claimed as historic San Francisco libations, and anybody daring to disagree with that would probably have been tossed out on their ears a la 1850s Barbary Coast bar custom.

Fortunately, there was only praise going on.

After all, it's not often you get to drink some pretty powerful liquor for free in the name of history.

"Mmm, now that's a great drink," murmured architect John Lum, the syrupy glory of Pisco fresh on his tongue. "When I drink it, I think of lace ... and corsets." He closed his eyes at the image.

"I don't normally drink anything," he said. "But I mean, who cannot when you're around this? How can you resist something from a century ago?"

Overseeing the drink creations for the night, and making sure they were historically accurate to the drop, was John Burton, one of the deans of California bartending and author of several books on the craft.

"These drinks are like art, and they are part of history," he said as fans of his work clustered around him, begging autographs on copies of "The Pour Man's Friend" and other cocktail tomes. "They are special."

"Take the Boothby Cocktail, for instance," he said. He turned to Carol Heinecke, a lifelong San Franciscan as he, who was standing with book and pen in hand, awaiting his attention.

"Madam, what did you think of the Boothby?" Burton asked in mock seriousness.

The Boothby, Burton explained, came about at the hands of legendary San Francisco bartender William T. "Cocktail" Boothby during his tenure at the Palace Hotel. He invented the drink just two years after the 1906 quake, and it became a centerpiece of his famous "Cocktail Boothby's American Bar-Tender" book - which featured a caricature of Boothby, face dead serious, in the shape of a rooster standing on top of a punch bowl.

They had quite a sense of humor while they were inventing these liquid touchstones of the craft, several people noted as they ogled reproductions of the famous rooster cover.

The Martini is known by most everyone who's ever set foot in a bar, but what many drinkers don't know is its origin. Burton happily educated all who asked.

"New York claims it, Italy claims it, but being a native San Franciscan, I know the truth about where the martini came from," he said. "The famous bartender Professor Jeremiah 'Jerry' Thomas, who wrote the first American bartender's guide, whipped it up himself one night in 1860, when a gold miner was at his bar in the Occidental Hotel and asked for a good stiff drink because he was heading out on the ferry for Martinez.

"Thomas gave him this drink, the miner asked what it was. Thomas said, 'Why, it's a Martinez cocktail,' and the name stuck." Over the years the name morphed into martini, Burton said.

The martini might have become more well known over the years, but back in the day - the century-plus-old day, that is - Pisco Punch was the king of cocktails in San Francisco.

This super-sweet mix of gum syrup, lemon juice and Peruvian pisco grape brandy first found life in Peru, and was brought to San Francisco in 1853 by John Torrence, when he opened the famous Bank Exchange bar on Montgomery Street.

The punch came in 5-gallon earthen jugs, and Torrence kept the recipe a strict secret. Rudyard Kipling loved it so much he said it tasted like it was made from the "wings of cherubs" - taken recently as the name of a book on Pisco Punch by Sunnyvale resident Guillermo L. Tora-Lira, who was happily signing copies Tuesday night.

Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller, Bret Harte and other drinking luminaries of the time also listed the punch as one of their favorites, Burton said. The Pisco, however, might have died out after the Prohibition era ended if not for the crafty stealth of one of the Bank Exchange's bartenders.

"He kept track of what ingredients were ordered, and started making it again," Burton said. "It's a very good thing he did, because the last man to actually have the recipe in his hand died and took it to his grave. We wouldn't have this drink today if not for that one bartender."

Burton's fellow craftsmen paused in their pouring duties to sagely nod their heads.

These were obviously fellows who took their work seriously, and they said Tuesday that they believe they are carrying on a tradition and a dignity for the bartending profession that dates all the way back to the Gold Rush days.

Do they ever feel like juggling bottles or dancing behind the bar, like Tom Cruise did in his bartending romp of a flick, "Cocktail?"